I Watched this Movie Today and So Should You

Trailer after the jump:

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More Lull

Actually, today was overall pretty cool. I just kind of hung around, listened to some of my favorite music, got caught up on some homework, watched some funny videos, read a bunch, and looked at some basses online. Now I'm gonna watch a cam of Extract and get a nice long sleep. I'm thinking midnight to 1, if I'm lucky.

Let's hope tomorrow is even better. Or, if it's not, then we'll return to the typical posts filled with bitterness and shattered dreams. You know, typical college stuff.

-Dave

I Can Return from Summer Vacation, and it Ain't Butter

Yep, it's true: I'm back at school and back on your intertubes. I doubt that the other contributors will be returning since they weren't ever really contributing in the first place, and thus never actually left (first zing of the semester!). I'll be running the show around here pretty much exclusively until hopefully I can find some people who can help me make this particular corner of cyberspace self-sustaining. How many corners does cyberspace have? Your face.

So I read the news that Disney is buying Marvel today. Good, Marvel sucks anyways. Dark Horse is where it's at.



More importantly, it looks like there is another alien sci-fi movie coming out this year that may be decent. Don't get me wrong, I really doubt this could possibly be better than District 9 (best movie of the summer, fyi lol omg brb). Here's the trailer:



Holy crap, that is creepy. Is the "archival footage" real? Of course not. Is this based on some stuff that really happened? No. Did the History Channel already do a show about Ancient Aliens? Oh yeah, and it was sweet. The bottom line is that this movie seems to be trying to add more creepiness to one of the most cliched plotlines ever used in movies: aliens are out there, have found us, and wanna take some of us to their ships to do mean things to us against our will. It's like passing out at a frat party! Connections to college!

-Dave

There's Something About Terminator: Salvation

I went to see this movie over the weekend and felt a great wave of MEH. Yeah, an all caps "meh". Let's rap:

1. Enough with the Jeebus references, McG. I'm not a baby, and so just one instance of Marcus Wright being place in a pseudo-crucifixion pose was quite enough of that. Actually, come to think of it, this is a Terminator movie and so zero references to Jeebus would have been fine.

2. OH MY GOD! YOU ARE THE RESISTANCE! AHHHHHH! It might have just been the theater I saw this movie in (whoops, I paid money for this, I know), but why was everything so loud? Even BatmanJohn Connor whispering into a radio was almost unbearably loud.

3. I want more motorcycle guys!

4. Two things broke the realism for me: holy crap, Kyle Reese is an Olympic marksman with every gun, and John Connor got stabbed in the heart but then instantly recovered; and then proceeded to detonate a nuke from a helicopter that was STILL OVER THE NUKE. Whoops, didn't mean to school you in nukes, but I went to Nuke Academy and got my PhD. in NuclearNookyuler Booms.

It was decently fun to see, but seriously don't spend money on this movie as long as this audio is available for free online:



This movie needed more of this happening and less of animatronic Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, pretty much anything would be better with less animatronic Governator.

-Dave

This Looks Funny

First of all, sorry about the recent lack of updates. Stuff here has been kind of hectic, what with me getting settled in and seeing a bunch of people at home here. Our normal post-structural post-feminist post-Marxist critique of a world in post-industrial postmodern decline through detailed analysis of YouTube videos of people falling over will resume shortly.

Woody Allen's new movie Whatever Works now has a trailer up and looks pretty funny. I'm not really sure what else to say about that. This blog is cynical and it's a cynical movie.



-Dave

I am Disappointed in BitTorrent

Really, pirates? Really? Downloading Fast and Furious 4, Crank 2, Underworldshutupshutupshutpshutup, Paul Blart, or Blah Blah Old Baby would be like hijacking a ship to steal the dirty laundry. Swashbuckling metaphors, I know.

-Dave

More-Famous Friday: Watch This Movie

Primer, for those of you who do not know (all of you), was a movie about time travel made in 2004. It's budget was only $7,000 and it was still an excellent movie. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival when it was released, and seems to have gained quite a large cult following since then. Here's the trailer:



I just watched it Wednesday at a club meeting, and holy crap was it excellent. I was actually following most of it (with the help of 2 people who had seen the movie before) until they said that one of the characters traveled back in time with a disassembled time machine; that prospect blew my mind.

Then someone said that they believe that the movie is an infinite loop due to some interesting details which I'll not spoil for you all here. How is my mind, you ask? BLOWNED! See this movie immediately. I'll even go so far as to say that this movie is worth buying the DVD. Yeah, it's that good.

-Dave

"Crank 2" Is An Epic of Sleazy Failurism

So, while I have yet to see the masterpiece-candidate Crank 2, I have already weighed in on it. Apparently some people have now fallen for the same stupid excuse that Snakes on a Plane used to redeem itself; yes, I'm looking at you, io9.

Just as Snacks on a Plane was a terrible movie, Crank 2 is terrible. I haven't seen it, you haven't seen it, let's just agree to agree that it's terrible. What Crank 2 is not, however, is an ironic meta-comedy commentary on the ridiculous nature of action films today. No meta-commentary, Crank 2, not yours.

So imagine my surprise when I started reading reviews that touted it as such. For instance, you can read io9's full review here. Get it right, internet! Snakes on a Plane was just a terrible movie and so is Crank 2 (and Crank 1, for that matter). If you want a cheek-in-tongue action movie, shut your stupid faces and go see Shoot 'Em Up and enjoy that like I did, veggie deaths and all.

-Dave

Observe and Depress

I just finished watching one of the many cam versions of Observe and Report (whoops, piracy is bad, yadda yadda yadda), and my overall impression of it was that it was just depressing. The majority of the dialogue wasn't funny, and I could tell most of the jokes that were going to be made by/about the majority of the characters. The Brandy subplot was more annoying than entertaining, and I still fail to understand why Detective Harrison hated Ronnie so much. Something about having to spend his whole day at the mall or whatever. Blah blah blah I hate easy days at work too. Oh wait, all my days at work are easy and I love it. Ha!

On the positive side, every scene involving Aziz Ansari was funny, as would be expected from a scene involving Aziz Ansari. Oh, and that also goes for the cop with the big mustache, which I believe went unnamed throughout.

Despite Seth Rogen's presence in this movie, it fell way flat for me. Then again, I thought that Pineapple Express was so good that I may have had unrealistic hopes for this movie.

Addressing the "dark comedy" aspect of this movie would be like addressing the "photorealistic" aspect of the Teletubbies. It was clear that this is what the movie was reaching for, since most of the time the characters' flaws were the butts of the jokes, but I didn't care at all about any of them (as opposed to other movies whose characters I care deeply about, I know). They just weren't realistic enough for me to feel guilty at all about laughing when Ronnie's mental health was mocked, for instance. I just felt annoyed that the joke wasn't better.

I guess you should see this movie if you love Seth Rogen, or if you watch it for free, but I would have been very annoyed if I had spent the $10 to see this in a theater. Whoops, Seth Rogen, that's your movie that you had to put work into and pretend to enjoy. I'm sure he'll feel that burn as he lays on his bed of money and diamonds tonight.

-Dave

Antiwhat?

Seriously:



My favorite part is the two overlapping screams. They harmonize quite well. That aside, though, what? What is this movie going to be about? Here are my notes from the trailers (I actually took these notes while watching the trailer, because I'm cool like that):

*Everything is tinted gray, and it looks sort of like the Blair Witch Project.
*The woman is getting too much medication (probably in an attempt to cure her grayness).
*Is that Willem Dafoe? Does he ever age?
*Two people go to a cabin in the woods.
*"Nature is Satan's church"? You can't just say things like that without an explanation.
*OMG dramatic look backwards.
*Sex in the tree of hands is weird.

This movie doesn't have a studio in the US yet, but I think we all might need to take a trip to the BitTorrent store to watch it anyways. I mean wait for it to come to theaters. Theaters aren't part of nature, so they're not part of Satan's church (and that's probably a good thing, right?).

-Dave

Sacha Baron Cohen Takes Over the Internet Again

So here's the red band trailer for Bruno, on the off chance that you are new to the internet today (many thanks to Videogum for stripping the MySpace age verification off of the video):



We need to see this movie together. You tell me when you're free, since I think it's already been made abundantly clear that my life consists of mocking YouTube divas and pointing out Harry Potter movie spoilers. You know how college is. How many links to old posts can I include in a single post?

-Dave

Let's Talk About RFK and Space Nazis

Here's the thing about this blog, you guys: I don't like a lot of things. In fact, it would be equally fair to say that I flat-out dislike a lot of things. Perhaps it could even be said that I dislike most things and that my cynical outlook will lead me deeper and deeper into the darkness of isolation until I die alone and unloved in a dirty hotel room.

Most days that would be a pretty fair assessment of my blogging career up to this point. With few exceptions, this blog has been an unrelenting wave of negativity and mockery. Not today, my friends. As Robert F. Kennedy once said, "There are those that look at space Nazis and ask "Why?" I dream of space Nazis and ask "Why not?"



I was in the mood for something like this today, and yet would never have thought to ask for it. Like a fine wine that pairs surprisingly well with one's dinner. Except that it's space Nazis. My metaphors bring all the boys to the yard.

-Dave

I Hate Bloggergies

For some reason, my allergies have really been flaring up badly for the last few days. Or maybe it's just that I found out that Crank 2 is coming out.



My goodness that's a lot of extreme camerawork. I guess we know where those ridiculousvisionary camera operators from the Matrix trilogy are working now.

Of course, the thing that we all seem to be over is WHAT? Crank 2? The UN considered renaming Crimes Against Humanity to Cranks Against Humanity after the first one nearly took over all of Europe before being defeated at Waterloo. And now, the cast and crew of Crank have escaped their exile to Elba to menace the world once again.

The world really is shrinking.

-Dave

More-Famous Friday: The Internet Needs to Love Michael Cera More

Less than 30,000 views? Are you serious, internet? We need to talk soon.

As for Michael Cera, I still only say to you:



And I'm serious about that. This movie had better be as Mel Brooksy as it looks.

-Dave

Michael Cera is So Cute Sometimes...

First of all, a big nullus on that title. Second, Michael Cera has finally announced that he will do the Arrested Development movie (...once it has a script).

According to E! Online:

Inside sources close to the negotiations of the upcoming Arrested Development movie tell me that Superbad and Juno star (and before that, hello, George-Michael Bluth!) Michael Cera has finally agreed to do the feature film project.

Excellent.

Dear Michael Cera,


-Dave

I am in Seventh Grade and I don't Care

Since the Oscars apparently happened (whoops, I forgot about watching that stupid awards show for movies I mostly didn't see), I thought it would be necessary to write about them. Basically, Heath Ledger won. Oh, and the nominees for best picture all seem like comedies when someone on YouTube splices together all of the swearing parts.



-Dave

More-Famous Friday: Suck, it Tarantino Haters

So, as you may or may not know, I really like the movie Pulp Fiction. It's actually the only movie I have ever bought for myself rather than as a gift for someone else. And it's on VHS, totally collectible.

Now, I know we've all seen the breakfast scene. If you need a quick refresher course (Directors with Weird Faces 101), it's available in full on YouTube. Holy crap, Samuel L. Jackson was cool in this movie.

Anyways, someone remade this scene (I wish I knew how) to make it a bit more...corporate. Methinks that maybe Big Kahuna Burger was cutting into someone's market share. Just watch:



To be honest, internet, I'm pretty disappointed in you. This video was uploaded in 2006 and it still only has about 12,000 views. That needs to change now.

-Dave

Charlie and the Chocolate End of the World

No, not that Charlie.



Yes, of course it's Woody Harrelson doing a viral marketing campaign for his new movie. It's still funny to mock people stupid enough to believe that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world. Of course it couldn't just be a flawed calendar. Nope.

-Dave

My Triumphant Return is Not a Tropic Thunder Sequel

This exists:


As much as you may think it is, and as much as I thought it was supposed to be a comedy, it isn't. This aberration would normally not even show up on my radar as being worthy of mockery except that it was the third most pirated movie during the preceding week, according to TorrentFreak.

Don't get me wrong, I am completely in favor of piracy as a general policy. Except in this case. Should you pay to see this movie? Absolutely not. Should you waste your bandwidth and give the producers the idea that they are perhaps not guilty of crimes against humanity? No. Shame on you, pirates.

It's good to have me back. Hopefully at least one other writer will be joining us before I leave again for New York on Saturday.

-Dave

This is Now Called the Outdated Movie Review Collective

Yes, I watched another movie today that is slightly old: Hamlet 2. Deal with it, I don't care, y'all don't even know me like dat. The point is this: it is the funniest movie of the year, bar none. I see now that those geniuses of cinematic criticism over at About.com even recognized its excellence, but didn't really order their picks. Let me just tidy up their list for them (excluding the 4 movies on the list which I did not see):
6. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
5. Tropic Thunder
4. Role Models
3. Pineapple Express
2. Step Brothers
1. Hamlet 2

2008 was a really good year for one-off comedies, it seems. My list would also include Burn After Reading, which I thought was surprisingly good at providing justification for Bradd Pitt's existence. I gladly await the hate mail from the "OmGWTfrjutalking abiout? he has such hawt abbs and is soi sxey i wnat to marry him fro his wahsbroad abs!!!!11!" crowd of housewives. They browse the blogosphere, trust me.

Aside from that, I've been studying for finals. And studying. And studying. Tomorrow is another study day, and then Wednesday and Thursday are my tests. After that I've got a whole month of freedom to devote to you all. Yeah right, like I'd waste my time with you fart sandwiches (trademark). I'll end this post with my favorite quotes from Hamlet 2:
"I feel like I've been raped...in the face."

"You're a liar! Everybody has rain gutters!" (probably requires context)

"We can't have intermission now, the fire department is trying to evacuate the building."

"You're gonna have a magical life because, wherever you go, it will be better than Tucson." (probably true, although the few times I've been there it seemed nice...ish)

Whoops, I mean piracy is bad.

-Dave